Trump Failures Demonstrating Why You Can’t Run Government Like a Business
May 1, 2017

 
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It was touted as his biggest selling point & greatest asset: Successful businessman. And if you think back to the Bush/Cheney Administration, they too referred to themselves as “the CEO presidency”… a failed Texas oilman with a string of failed business behind him that required repeated bailouts by his well-connected Daddy, and a running mate who struck it rich running one of the largest government contractors in the country (Halliburton)… to explain why they were the most qualified to run this country. And we all know how THAT turned out.

“Governments” are not “businesses”. They are not run for profit. They exist solely to provide their citizens with services. Services necessary to maintain a healthy stable society.

For example, to survive in a modern society, people need to work. That means building schools and hiring teachers to educate our children so they can do those jobs. It means building roads to get to work, and get to the stores to purchase the products people produce. If you don’t drive, it means providing buses, bus stops, bus drivers and bus stations. If you DO drive, it means providing places to obtain a drivers license, providing highway patrol officers to ensure public safety. It means traffic lights & road signs. It means providing police, and courts to prosecute criminals and settle disputes. It’s a Service, not a “business.” Meanwhile, if a private enterprise builds a road, that’s a huge expense they would have to charge you for to make their money back. If private industry built all of our infrastructure, every road would be a toll road, every bridge would be a toll bridge. The government owns every airport because we can’t have every airline building its own, and the air traffic controllers are all government employees because we can’t have controllers working for one particular airline giving takeoff/landing preference to whatever airline they happen to work for. And do we REALLY want a corporation… desperate to save money… cutting corners on police, fire fighters and Air Traffic Control… overworking already stressed out controllers using outdated equipment to land passenger jets filled with as many as 200, 300, even 400 passengers? (In many instances, this is ALREADY taking place as Republicans in Congress see no connection between defunding this vital service only to then fly home later that evening and then drive the rest of the way home on public roads.)

Trump is presently promising “The largest tax cut in history”… something EVERY Republican president since (and including) Reagan has promised. And when asked how the country can afford such massive tax cuts without exploding the Debt/Deficit, Trump’s answer is the same answer all of his Republican predecessors gave: “growth” would offset the cost. George HW Bush… while running for president against Reagan in 1980… called Reagan’s scheme: “Voodoo economics.” And he was right. Massive tax cuts do not create enough growth to offset their cost.

When Reagan slashed taxes in 1981, the Deficit exploded, unemployment continued to soar to 10.8% twenty-one months later, and he was finally forced to raise taxes eleven times to stop the bleeding. Bush-41 did the same thing (despite his own warnings) and he too ended up with rising unemployment and having to raise taxes to stop the exploding Deficit.

After him, Bill Clinton RAISED taxes on the wealthy in what Newt Gingrich called “the largest tax increase in history” that he was CERTAIN would send the country plunging into another Recession. Instead, by the end of his second term, we had balanced the budget (twice) and unemployment had fallen to just 3.9%.

Then Bush-43 told voters on the campaign trail that the fact we were taking in enough tax revenue to pay off the deficit, we were clearly taxing people too much (ergo, we will NEVER pay off the Debt under a Republican president because the moment revenue exceeds our expenses, they will use it to justify another tax cut.) “It’s not their money! It’s YOUR money!” Bush told cheering crowds. And when he became president, he passed another massive tax cut that he promised “would pay for itself with all the growth it would create.” Instead, the Deficit exploded, the global economy tanked, we went from a projected $250 Billion Surplus to a $1.4Trillion dollar Deficit, and sent unemployment soaring that would hit 10% before President Obama was able to pass his “stimulus”.

Like President Clinton, President Obama raised taxes too. The result? The Deficit was cut by 2/3rds, unemployment fell to just 4.6%, and the economy was creating over 200,000 jobs per month by the time he left office last January.

And now Trump is promising to Repeat the mistakes of the last three Republican presidents before him by slashing taxes once again, promising that the inevitable growth will offset the cost.

Republicans are ideologues. History be damned. If something “sounds right”, it MUST be true. Cutting taxes: Good. Raising taxes: Bad. Don’t bother looking back at the last three Republican presidencies where they did the exact same thing to disastrous results. And definitely don’t copy the last two Democratic presidents and their successful results as any kind of guide (Those who don’t learn from history… are Republicans.) If you are the CEO Of a corporation, cutting your tax burden increases your profits, and that’s a GOOD thing. But taxes to a corporation are AN EXPENSE. In government, taxes are your REVENUE. What kind of successful businessman thinks the path to success is to cut their revenue? Trump is thinking from the perspective of a business owner, and that “business success” translates into “economic success for the country.” It’s a bit like a dog worrying about what’s good for his ticks.

Businesses are not Democracies. They are Dictatorships, where one person… the “CEO”… makes all the decisions and does not have to answer to anyone. Trump is not used to having to answer to others before he’s permitted to do something. If they want something done, they just do it… well, maybe not themselves personally. Most CEO’s… like Donald Trump… typically “farm out” individual duties. They hire (as Trump himself put it) “the best people” to do individual jobs for them (such as putting Rick Perry in charge of our nukes, a befuddled former brain surgeon in charge of housing, and a lobbyist paid by Russia advising him on national security). Rarely does the CEO of a company do all the work themselves. In fact, during the campaign, Donald Trump Jr. told a reporter that his father would likely “outsource foreign AND domestic policy” to his VP. When asked the obvious follow-up, WTF will your DAD be doing then? He’d be busy “making America great again” was the reply (whatever in the hell THAT means.)

The problem is, the president can’t just hand off his duties to a subordinate. The VP does not have the authority to sign legislation or set policy. So when Trump said two weeks ago how surprised he was to learn how HARD the job of being president is, saying (quote) “I thought it would be easier” (someone owes Obama an apology then), the rest of us just shook our heads in disbelief. Meet the Press found several clips of Trump on the campaign trail saying how “easy” it would be to do so many of the things he was promising. And he really couldn’t figure out why things appeared to be so difficult for everyone else to do (clearly, those other presidents just didn’t posses his business acumen.) But now that he’s actually IN the job, he’s discovering that it’s actual work. And he can’t just hand off his responsibilities to his VP (or his advisor/son-in-law Jared). He must actually do the work himself (remember all the times Bush whined about how “hard” it was being president and all the “hard work” that goes into it?)

One hundred days in office, Trump has ZERO policy accomplishments. The ONLY campaign promise he can point to as having accomplished since becoming president is getting hard-right Conservative Judge Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court, and even THAT piddling “accomplishment” required breaking the rules (“the Nuclear Option”.) He criticized President Obama for his use of military force, yet in just his first 100 days, he has attacked Syria, dropped “The Mother Of All Bombs” on Afghanistan, and may be pushing the United States to the brink of nuclear war with South Korea.

“Repealing ObamaCare” AND covering “preexisting conditions” without a mandate was going to be easy-peasy-orange-squeezy, and he knew how to make Mexico pay for The Wall. I’m sure he believed the job of president was to be “CEO of the entire country” (aka king) and it was Congresses job to fulfill the president’s every wish (which makes it easier to understand why Conservative voters blame Obama exclusively for everything and leave the most obstructionist Congress in history blameless.) Suddenly, being president is “hard” once again, and running the country isn’t the same as running a corporation.

On the flip side, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard Republicans pronounce “America is a Republic, not a Democracy!” They love saying that because in their diminutive home-schooled brains (as far as I can figure out), “Republics” should be run by “Republicans” while “Democracies” are run by Democrats. And you CAN’T just put Democrats in charge of a REPUBLIC, now can you? That’s when I remind them the former Soviet Union… the U.S.S.R.… the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics… was a “Republic”, as is the “Republic of China”. So what exactly is their point about American being a “Republic”? (I’ve never received a coherent answer to that one.)

So America isn’t a business. And Republics don’t require Republicans to lead them. Is there ANYTHING about government Republicans get right?

Throughout the campaign, Trump complained bitterly of “all of President Obama unconstitutional Executive Orders.” And I have NO doubt that Trump believed at that time that ALL “Executive Orders”, in and of themselves, were “unconstitutional”. Whoever was advising Trump (Twitter?) was likely telling him that President Obama was passing laws… laws that never went through Congress… in violation of the Constitution. And “on Day One” he would “repeal every one of Obama’s unconstitutional Executive Orders”, only to get into office and sign 31 Executive Orders of his own in just his first 100days. And why not? Signing Executive Orders where one person makes all the rules (not laws) without requiring the approval of Congress is the most “CEO-like” power bestowed upon the president. And because of that, expect to see A LOT more of it before Trump leaves office.

To quote Trump himself told The Associated Press two weeks ago: “Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government involves heart, whereas in business most things don’t involve heart. In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it.”

And 62 million Americans said, “Yes, we want a heartless corporate tycoon in charge of our government and making decisions that affect our lives, because THAT is how we’ll ‘Make America Great Again’.” People without heart… without empathy… are called “Sociopaths” and have no business running a public service. (pardon the pun.)
 

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May 1, 2017 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: General, Greed, Money, myth busting, Politics, Right-Wing Hypocrisy, Seems Obvious to Me, Taxes

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